winscape 2209

I think we may be talking at cross purposes here. Your description of people being rewarded even though they did no work is what I meant by "excessive concern for political correctness leads people to ...." I'm sure there are cases of this happening. It's not good for anyone. The point is whether sometimes people's work is *under*valued because of some factor that doesn't have anything to do with the work.

Probably. Do I know the details? No. It could easily be true that bias was shown by both male and female reviewers. I have vague recollections of other studies in which bias against female students (not calling on them as often in clbutt, e.g.) was exhibited by both male and female instructors.

I'm sure there are people who think that the reason there are so few women in computing is that there's a vast all-male conspiracy to keep them out. I'm not one of those people. I think there *is* subtle social pressure that makes girls think "not for me" about technical careers, but some of it comes from other girls-women.

What you seem to be saying here is that some of the men listened, some didn't (the untrainable), and at least one woman didn't? How about the other women?

Well, when I say "play by men's rules", I'm talking about ways of interacting with other people that seem to be second nature to a lot of men, but not to many women -- arguing forcefully for one's ideas, for example, and not exhibiting self-doubt. I'm skeptical that the value of an idea correlates strongly with how forcefully its originator argues for it. People can be very vocal about something that's very wrong, no?

Really, though, I should shut up about this, because even though your experience is somewhat dated, you have more of it than I do (though I did spend about 10 years in non-academic computing), and even I don't think I really know what I'm talking about here.

Sure.

What I guess I'm saying is that we need to be careful that we're not setting up artificial barriers to entry. If someone is not interested (based on an accurate perception of what the field is like), or not capable (based on what's really needed to get work done), okay, and maybe it will turn out that the ones that *are* interested and capable are mainly guys. I just think it's possible that right now we're leaving out people who would be interested if they knew more about what the field is like, and are capable if the skill set isn't defined to include things that don't have much to do with getting work done.

But this may be 100% academic ivory-tower thinking.

-- B. L. Mbuttingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.